By Professor P John Clarkson
Presentation from the International Conferance on Agile Manufacturing 2007: University of Durham, Durham. A webcast can be found here: http://tv.theiet.org/technology/manu/821.cfm About the presentation
Because agility is defined as the ability of a system to adapt itself to rapid and unexpected changes, the concept soon was applied to fields beyond manufacturing. The entire production process, starting from the customer order, and passing through product development, procurement, manufacturing, supply chain management, delivery and services, should be agile in order to be competitive. Also, for the software development industries, process industries and services industries, agility either is or will be essential. Agility covers both technical and managerial aspects.